Monday, January 5, 2015

A NEW PET AND BEATING ALLERGIES

HAPPY NEW YEAR! January 1st brought a welcome change to our family. We added this big guy to our small brood.

He came with the name Deuce, but my guys didn’t want a dog with a name that is used for potty talk. We’re classy like that. So, we changed it to Zeus. It’s similar enough that it didn’t confuse him and much more befitting for a family protector. He’s a one and a half year old Doberman. Obviously. I know you didn’t mistake him for a teacup poodle.

Chris has always said that he’d like to have a big male one day, but we didn’t have that on our current radar. Plus, we always thought we’d bring home another puppy when that day finally came. But, when the opportunity came to us like it we did we knew we had to explore further. First we met him and found out his back story. He’s from a champion line of show dogs and was intended to be a show dog himself. Long story short – the person who bought him never worked with him and didn’t bother to train him to show. He was co-owned with the breeder and she ended up with him with the intention of making him a champion. She is super busy with her other show dogs and farm (I don’t know how she does it all) and realized that she didn’t have the time to show him. She thought the best thing for him was to live out his life as a happy pet in a loving home. We knew we liked him, and he liked us, too. We needed to see if Layla would agree, so the breeder brought him to our house to have a meet-and-greet with her. That was going to be the biggie for us. She’d have to like him. We knew that there might be an adjustment period (if it was going to work at all) because she’s always been the lone dog in the house. When we saw that it looked like she was going to take to him, the breeder suggested that Layla come spend a week at their house so they could get acquainted better in a setting where she wouldn’t feel like she had to be our protector. We picked them both up New Year’s Day and began the process of adjusting to our new family dynamic.

Zeus has a very sweet and silly personality that made it very easy to fall in love with him. He is a great fit for our family. He has quickly learned the way we do things at our house; no dogs on the furniture or eating off of the counters. Yeah, we’re mean like that. We’ve really only had one small hiccup in the adjustment period – Isaac’s allergies.

It’s never been too big of an issue before. Whenever he would be done playing with Layla, Isaac would simply go wash his hands and that was that. Adding a second dog to mix immediately set his eyes to itching and nose to running – no petting required. He spent Friday night at his mammaw’s and his nose cleared right up. When he came home Saturday the flare-up started within minutes of entry and the allergy pill he took didn’t even alleviate the symptoms. I had intended to make him an appointment with the doctor this morning to see if she had something that would help him. It looks like that’s not going to be necessary.